By Stephen Lawson
Last month, I was walking through a forest when I came upon a pool sprinkled with fallen leaves. Branches, thick roots and bushes enclosed the still water. I crept in for a closer look. Suddenly I heard a rustling in the brush. The path I’d taken up from the road was too rough for a quick retreat, but I couldn’t resist going further to see what had made that noise. Already that afternoon I’d seen both a big black water buffalo and a good-sized monkey ambling along the road, wild and free. I had read about wild boars and barking deer (?) around here too, and even an occasional nighttime leopard sighting. I peered through the leaves and up the thin, 30-foot-tall trees. Then I started to worry: What if my cell phone rings? I was in the middle of Hong Kong’s New Territories, just a couple of miles from high-rises, well within cell range. Would “Flight of the Bumblebee” scare off a wild animal or provoke it? Just to be safe, I switched the phone to Meeting mode so it would only vibrate. I was in a meeting with a wild animal.
Years ago, on vacation here, I went to an outlying island to visit a mountaintop monastery. From there I walked toward an old fishing village across the island. The road wound down through the hills until it reached an inlet on the shore. I instantly knew I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere: My map didn’t show any route from there to the village. The road was far too steep to go back up. Finally I found a ragged dirt trail and a weathered wooden sign with two Chinese characters carved in it. I recognized the first one and took a chance.
Two hour’s walk along shore, forest, and bluff, nearly alone and looking out at the new airport being built off shore, brought me to the village and the ferry back. And that day last month, my meeting with the wild animal ended safely – the beast made like a shady tycoon and never showed. But both days, I learned something. Hong Kong, one of the most polluted and densely populated places in the world, is also a hiker’s paradise. It has 298 km (185 miles) of major trails and countless other paths stretching across the Kowloon peninsula and all the major islands. In fact, 40 percent of Hong Kong is parkland, and other large chunks are still mostly undeveloped.
That’s hard to believe when you’re in the areas where most people spend their time. Up close, the urban Hong Kong you see on postcards is a labyrinth of sooty skyscraper canyons. Diesel buses and never-ending construction drown out conversation. Every weekend shopping trip is like a wildly successful street fair.
It’s a typical Asian city, developing so fast and with such hunger that until the past few years, environmental protection was at the bottom of the agenda. But two things made Hong Kong different: Money and water. For most of Hong Kong’s history, the local government has held back sales of its land in order to bring in top dollar and keep property values high. And, back when Hong Kong was a colony cut off from China, the colonizers had to build large reservoirs. This meant the surrounding mountains, then denuded by terrace farming, had to be reforested to stop erosion into the lakes.
The result is lush countryside with an occasional steep peak jutting out like the mountains in old brush paintings. Though the wild monkeys, pineapples and bananas might fool you, this isn’t really the tropics. There’s no dark, dripping jungle, and the sticky heat only lasts half the year. But regular rains keep streams and waterfalls drizzling down the hillsides all the time, and the hills and canyons are always green. Banyan trees hold the Earth together with their lazy grasp. In summer, the cicada-like chirping of beetles creates a sweet din. For a hiker used to the pine trees and dry brush of the American West, this is another world.
You can’t beat the convenience: All the main trailheads can be reached by frequent trains and buses. On most routes, hikers spend at least part of their time on “pedestrian roads,” well-maintained concrete lanes that are open to official vehicles – as trails, they’re hard on the feet, but durable in the rain.And, there are little shelters and picnic tables every few kilometers. Cell phones aren’t just viable, but recommended gear.
Granted, this is no wilderness, but the solitude is often more complete than on a Bay Area or Southern California trail. Native Hong Kongers work six days a week and prefer noisy group activities on their time off. My friend Ernest is typical: On weekends he often heads for the hills to fight paint-gun wars, which draw a lot of recruits. There’s not much solitude in that. But come to think of it, I wouldn’t have minded a pellet gun when I heard that leopard.
Copyright © 2001 Stephen Lawson